Installing Windower

Windower provides the connectivity and addon interface and xiloader.exe provides the launcher required to connect to a private server (DarkstarProject is the name of the private servers and the loader is maintained by their developers).

Current Versions

Windower: v4.3

xiloader.exe: v1.0.5

Download xiloader.exe and place in your \Program Files (x86)\PlayOnline\SquareEnix\PlayOnlineViewer folder. This acts as the “PlayOnline” loader for private servers.

Download the Stable release of Windower and place it in a folder on your computer. It will automatically download the components it needs, so be sure it’s not simply sitting on your desktop. For this guide, we’ll assume you’ve placed it in \Program Files (x86)\Windower4.

The full installation, without plugins or addons, is around 16 MB.

After installation is complete, open Windower to generate your initial settings.xml file. Once it has launched, click the x in the top right to close Windower for the next step.

Configuring Windower

Unfortunately, Windower is targeted at the Retail servers and requires a bit of extra work to get working for a private server.

Navigate to your Windower installation directory. This is usually at \Program Files (x86)\Windower4.

In this directory, you’ll see a settings.xml file, open it up in Notepad (or NotePad2, if you want proper line endings).

For a new installation, your settings.xml will empty. Below is the before and after you can copy into your settings with an explanation of each key and value.

required This tells the Windower which system to connect to Nocturnal Souls. connect.nocturnalsouls.net is the address of Nocturnal Souls.

You can add --user YourUserName --pass YourPassword (replacing YourUserName and YourPassword with your actual user name and password) after the server parameter to enable Windower to automatically log you in.

executable

xiloader.exe

required This tells the Windower to bypass the default PlayOnline launcher and use xiloader.exe to connect to a private server.

consolekey

Insert

required Specifies that the Insert key pulls up the in-game lua console. This is the default and works best as Insert isn’t used by any core FFXI functionality.

mipmaplevel

6

optional This overrides the default FFXI configuration for your MIP Map level; 6 being the highest and will render high resolution textures at the farthest distance. You can reduce this based on your system power.

gamma

-0.435

optional This is the default base gamma that the system uses in game. This is a personal preference, but around -0.50 tones down the extreme brightness in the game and looks richer. YMMV. You can tweak this to your liking.

uiscale

1.5

optional This is the base scale of the user interface (menus, chat boxes, etc.) compared to your display resolution. If you play at a resolution higher than 1920x1080, 1.5x UI scale is recommended or menus and chat boxes become extremely small.

alwaysenablegamepad

false

optional If you do not use a gamepad to play FFXI, this prevents the game from constantly querying for it which can lead to lag on some systems.

Save settings.xml and re-launch Windower; you’ll see the new Nocturnal Souls listing. Double-click to begin connecting and the xiloader.exe will appear.

The first time you connect to Nocturnal Souls, you’ll need to press 2 create a new account. If you already have an account, you can press 1 to login and continue (or use the autologin if you’ve added your username and password to the settings.xml).

That’s it! Welcome to Nocturnal Souls!

Suggested Addons and Plugins

Windower has a rich community of addon and plugin developers.

Addons are Lua files and plugins are .dll libraries. The community is steadily moving away from plugins and towards addons as they are easier to maintain and more transparent (being plain text Lua files). An understanding of Lua is not required, but can be useful if you want to enhance functionality on your own.

Here are the addons we suggest:

All addons, once installed through Windower’s “addons” tab, will be placed in the \Windower4\addons directory. In there, most can be further configured by modifying in the \{addon_name}\data\settings.xml file. That’s a bit outside the scope of this document, however, many, if not all addons come with a README to explain settings and further configuration.

If you plan to use the Lua console at all, this adds a black background to it to make it easier to see in game.

enemybar

Adds a large, onscreen health bar for your targeted enemy.

findall

Allows you to search all of your inventory bags, safes, satchels, and wardrobes for an item by typing //findall {query}

macrochanger

Automatically toggles your macro book and page based on your current job, so you don’t have to.

pointwatch

Adds an XP counter showing current XP, XP to level, and XP gain rate.

shortcuts

highly recommended Allows you to cast spells using quick commands, such as //c2 me for “Cure II on me” or //ref tha to cast “Refresh on Thad”. Matches partial spell AND player names.

silence

Removes the chat spam for when you change inventory items on job changes and macros.

tparty

Allows you to see the TP of your other party members.

Here are the plugins we suggest:

All plugins, once installed through Windower’s “plugins” tab, will be placed in the \Windower4\plugins directory. In there, most can be configured by modifying the matching named .xml file under \plugins\settings or matching .xml file in the \plugins directory. e.g. the Weathermon plugin has a corresponding settings file at \plugins\settings\weathermon.xml.

plugin

what it does

weathermon

Allows you to see an icon (up near your buffs) of the current weather and set alerts for specific weather types.

chatmon

Allows you to set audiable alerts for any in game chat messages, such as when you receive a tell, are invited to a party, or when a treasure chest drops off a mob.

delaymenot

Removes the delay between when you hold down Ctrl or Alt and when your macro bars appear.

config

highly recommended Adds several fantastic configurations, such as being able to move the FPS cap from 30 to 60, etc.

timers

highly recommended Adds a configurable list of your recasts, duration of buffs (on you and others), and any other custom timer you might want.

Please keep in mind that plugins and configuration settings that increase framerate CAN cause cutscenes to fail.

If you’re using the config plugin and are having troubles with a cutscene freezing, use //config FrameRateDivisor 2 to reset your framerate to 30 fps before starting the cutscene, and then //config FrameRateDivisor 1 to reset it back to 60 fps afterwards.

Configuring config.xml

As stated above, Config is a highly recommended. Once installed, you’ll find it’s configuration file at \plugins\settings\config.xml. Open it up in a plain text editor and you’ll see similar. These are the recommended settings.

<settings>
<global>
<!--If set to true will automatically determine the correct aspect ratio-->
<AdjustAspectRatio>true</AdjustAspectRatio>
<!--Explicitly define the aspect ratio (x:y resolution), will be ignored if "AdjustAspectRatio" is enabled-->
<AspectRatio>1.77778</AspectRatio>
<!--If set to true will automatically lock onto a target after engaging-->
<BattleAutoTarget>true</BattleAutoTarget>
<!--Only integer values, 3 being the lowest and 0 the highest-->
<AnimationFrameRate>0</AnimationFrameRate>
<!--If set to true will enable footstep effects (both display and sound)-->
<FootstepEffects>true</FootstepEffects>
<!--Time in minutes of inactivity until a disconnect, 0 to disable-->
<AutoDisconnectTime>0</AutoDisconnectTime>
<!--The maximum map draw distance, 1 being the game's maximum setting-->
<ClippingPlane>1</ClippingPlane>
<!--The maximum map draw distance, old setting, but still in use? Have both maybe?-->
<MapDrawDistance>2</MapDrawDistance>
<!--2 for 30 FPS, 1 for 60 FPS, 0 for uncapped frame rates-->
<FrameRateDivisor>1</FrameRateDivisor>
</global>
</settings>